Impairing the European Union, Gibe by Gibe

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, left, and Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, center, were among leaders facing reporters in Jerusalem on Jan. 18.Credit
Pool photo by Ziv Koren

PRAGUE — The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, jokes about Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to be Europe’s “permanent chairperson.” Mr. Sarkozy, the president of France, says rather patronizingly of the Czechs, “They’re doing what they can.”

It may seem like a round of adolescent insults more suited to high school, but the bitterness between the last holder of the European Union presidency, France, and the current one, the Czech Republic, is damaging the alliance’s ability to cope with the severe economic crisis.

The spat, which is both personal and political, highlights the divisions in the 27-nation group between larger countries and smaller ones, between more liberal-minded economies and more statist ones, between nations that use the euro and those that do not, and between Western Europe and Central Europe — so-called old Europe and new.

The divisions are worsened by the global economic meltdown, which is bringing out protectionist and nationalist talk and decisions that are undermining the idea of a common European market for goods and services, and make the idea of a Europe that wants to be a global player in an Obama era seem more than faintly ridiculous. Mr. Klaus has never cared much for the European Union anyway.

Mr. Sarkozy, who only reluctantly handed over the revolving European Union presidency at the end of the year, has criticized the Czechs for being both timid and slow in their response to the crisis. The Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, and his aides have accused Mr. Sarkozy of irresponsibility and megalomania. Mr. Klaus added dryly: “I don’t think it’s necessary to be overactive and to organize a European summit every weekend.”

The sense of insult runs deep, however. Mr. Sarkozy, who flew into the vacuum of a fading Bush administration to try to organize with Egypt a cease-fire in Gaza, refused to invite the Czechs to an emergency summit meeting on Gaza on Jan. 18 at Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, Czech officials said. Only the largest European nations were invited — not even the European Union’s external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, was notified.

It was only after the Czechs got the Israelis to invite them to a dinner that evening in Jerusalem after the summit meeting — and persuaded Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to take Mr. Topolanek on her plane — that the French grudgingly relented, the officials said. Mrs. Merkel pushed it also, a Czech official said. “She felt the E.U. should be there,” the official said.

French officials do not dispute the account, but they say that Egypt is also to blame. “Have we handled everything perfectly?” a senior French official said. “Of course not. We could have handled it more gently and massaged it. But the Czechs were not an actor and had nothing to say.”

The Czech Republic is a small country, outside the United Nations Security Council, outside the eurozone — the 16 nations that have adopted the euro as their currency — new to the European Union and unused to the diplomatic head table, the French official continued.

“There was a vacuum that needed to be filled,” the official said. “You don’t become an actor just because you have the E.U. presidency. You have to impose an international role for the E.U. — you have to create the dynamics by your efforts.”

The Czech Republic did, however, handle the recent natural gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine deftly, the French acknowledge, preventing the Bulgarians and Slovaks from breaking European unity.

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But then Mr. Sarkozy promised $7.8 billion in state aid to French carmarkers, while calling on them to “repatriate” jobs from other, less expensive European Union countries, specifically citing the Czech Republic.

“This is something that’s very damaging to both of us,” Mr. Topolanek said of the spat. But he was not alone in calling Mr. Sarkozy’s comments on repatriating jobs “unbelievable,” and he said big countries in the eurozone were destroying their own rules about financial stability and limited subsidies.

The European Union and the European Central Bank are struggling to deal with a broad economic crisis that is affecting every European country, some feeling it far worse than others. Under the pressure of the crisis, a collective of shared sovereignties built on the idea of a common market of goods and services is being riven by statist policies and incipient protectionism.

The eurozone itself is being strained by the desire of some countries, like France, to suspend or break budgetary rules and spend their way out of the crisis, and by the poor performance of countries like Greece, Italy and Spain, which have never cared much for the budgetary rules and can neither devalue their currencies nor alter interest rates. The Czechs, like the Germans, are much more cautious about violating European fiscal standards.

“In a time of economic crisis, we see atavistic instincts emerging,” said the Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, describing the way that individual nations are responding to popular distress by patriotic and protectionist measures and statements and by playing down the unity of Europe.

“I’m most afraid of the slogans of the 1930s” about the primacy of the nation, he said. “With these problems, people forget about European thinking, and it’s understandable but it’s damaging, very damaging to ignore Europe in a crisis, especially as the crisis grows.”

What is “strange,” he said, his voice heavy with irony, “is to hear these slogans from the people who were the proudest defenders of Europe centralization and European values,” a clear reference to France. Big and small countries are a fact of life, he said. “But we have to say that the European Union has civilized these relations compared to the early years of the 20th century,” making the kind of wars in Europe that often followed economic panic seem impossible today, he said.

France, Germany and Britain still dominate the European Union and want to continue to do so, said Alexandr Vondra, the Czech deputy prime minister for European affairs. “Occasionally they consult others,” he said, “but of course the people of small countries know this, and that’s why there is hesitation about the Lisbon Treaty,” which would create a permanent European president and foreign minister, and which the Irish have rejected and the Czechs have not yet ratified. “People fear more of this power management.”

Mr. Sarkozy, he said, was responding to domestic political and economic pressures, but insults had to be answered. “I’m not hurt, but he can’t expect us to just sit silently,” Mr. Vondra said. “We’re not a European superpower, but we’re 10 million people and he can’t just expect us to shut up.”

Mr. Sarkozy, he said, “is a fountain of ideas, and wants to organize one meeting after another, but we’re working hard to make a few of these ideas reality and not bankrupt Europe.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Gibe by Gibe, French-Czech Feud Impairs Europe’s Response to Economic Crisis. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe